Whatever significance is attached to Chicagos failed bid to host the 2016 Olympics, it is of small importance to the rest of the country. More far-reaching and frightening is the Supreme Courts decision to take up a case challenging the citys ban on handgun ownership in the courts new term, which begins this week.

The case is best considered a preview of coming attractions. The gun lobby, if it wins in the Supreme Court, is prepared to challenge every gun control law enacted at any level of government. It will usher in a scary season of assault on the common sense of citizens, law enforcement officials and others who believe that carrying todays high-powered weapons in an urbanized, mobileand angrysociety is chillingly dangerous, and deadly.

Since the high court last year struck down the District of Columbias ban on handgun ownership, gun rights advocates have eagerly awaited a case that would extend the decision to states and localities. Because the District of Columbia is a federal entity, a different case was needed to establish that states and municipalities dont have the right to impose broad gun restrictions. Chicago has become the test case.

Almost no one expects the conservative-leaning court to uphold Chicagos prohibition, which applies only to handguns. Owners of rifles used in hunting, for example, are unaffected by the local law.

This distinction says much about the current state of gun politics. Only about a decade ago, gun rights activists often claimed that they wanted their weapons in order to hunt. They would evoke childhood memories of kinship that grew in the woods as one generation of hunters passed an ancient art on to another.

Those arguments seem as quaint now as the assumption that reasonable people do not bring firearms to political events featuring the president..(continued)

Only about a decade ago, gun rights activists often claimed that they wanted their weapons in order to hunt.

That was never claimed by us "gun lobbyists". We all simply defended the practicality of semi-autos for hunting when the liberal "panty-waist" lobby told us we did not need them because they weren't of any use for hunting.

We only fought the battle using the terms they defined (probably a mistake in itself). But the basic argument never changed, it has only taken a decade to get the terms of the argument defined as they should be.

10
posted on 10/07/2009 2:14:43 PM PDT
by PsyOp
(Put government in charge of tire pressure, and we'll soon have a shortage of air. - PsyOp.)

My crystal ball tells me the ruling will go something like this: The state/city cannot put a total ban on handguns in the home, but other restrictions, well they might be OK...leaving...no, kicking the door wide open for restrictions on the types of handguns or other guns, limits on types of ammunition and how much you can have, limits on actually carrying arms, licensing, etc. Everything but a “complete ban on handguns”.

12
posted on 10/07/2009 2:15:57 PM PDT
by SandWMan
( I'm still trying to find the section in the Constitution that mentions "nation building".......)

A predictable, laughable, liberal's screed. Idiots like this need to be directly confronted with questions like, "How is it common sense when all data definitively illustrate the exact opposite of what you claim?" or "Isn't true that what you call "common sense" is really just your opinion based on your personal fear of firearms and not on any factual data or information at all?"

Then sit back a watch the sputtering and stuttering and personal outrage...all of which proves you right and them to be asses.

15
posted on 10/07/2009 2:19:39 PM PDT
by Sudetenland
(Slow to anger but terrible in vengence...such is the character of the American people.)

It will usher in a scary season of assault on the common sense of citizens, law enforcement officials and others who believe that carrying todays high-powered weapons in an urbanized, mobileand angrysociety is chillingly dangerous, and deadly.

Actually, today's chillingly dangerous, angry urbanized society is the reason that I own high-powered weapons.

I fear you are right. I don't believe even the conservative supreme's have a clear understanding of the intent of our founding fathers. I believe that men like Scalia are just as subject to the pressures of politics as any member of congress is.

Scalia's writings in the Heller case were...inadequate in their defense of the RTKBA. When I read Heller, I was greatly dissappointed by the decision.

19
posted on 10/07/2009 2:22:52 PM PDT
by Sudetenland
(Slow to anger but terrible in vengence...such is the character of the American people.)

The lawlessness and tremendous rise in gun murders in the streets of DC after the previous Court Decision makes the prospect of extending the protection of the Court to the 2nd Amd in Chicago truly frightening. Chicago will be depopulated as the gun war of all against all consumes the City and daily sweeps must begin to collect the bodies from the sidewalks. Ms. Brady told me so and no one is wiser than Ms. Brady, except perhaps Ms. Sotomasomethingorother.

All they have to do is sneak in a provision declaring gun control by the feds in some innocuous bill such like theyre doing with health care ... guns gone ....

That won’t work. The Heller decision last year did away with that option. In DC v. Heller, SCOTUS ruled that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” as protected in the Second amendment is a right for individuals to keep and bear arms. So any federal law to outlaw individual ownership of firearms would run afoul of the precedent of DC v. Heller.

The case this year involves Chicago. And the main question is one of “incorporation.” That’s the principle that the 14th amendment, the language “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,"” means that the states can’t violate a person’s second amendment rights. The court in the past has ruled that the first amendment, the fourth amendment, the fifth and sixth amendments all apply to the state due to this language in the 14th amendment. They have never ruled whether that also means that the 2nd Amendment applies to the states.

All they have to do is sneak in a provision declaring gun control by the feds in some innocuous bill such like theyre doing with health care ... guns gone ....

As much as they desire to take our guns away from us, the real question is can they resist their inner voices and fascist impulses that relentlessly drive them to actually try something as dumb as this. I sincerely hope they don't try it.

In some ways Mr. Heinlein was a guide and maybe a prophet. Take his novel Starship Troopers: In the Terran Federation the rights of a full Citizen (to vote, and hold public office) must be earned through some form of volunteer "military" service. Those residents who have not exercised their right to perform this Federal Service retain the other rights generally associated with a modern democracy (free speech, assembly, etc.), but they cannot vote or hold public office. This structure arose ad hoc after the collapse of the 20th century western democracies, brought on by both social failures at home and military defeat by the Chinese Hegemony overseas. I really like that idea. If it were already enacted here, you'd have never heard of Barack Obama.

32
posted on 10/07/2009 2:48:30 PM PDT
by 2ndDivisionVet
(I will raise $2 million for Sarah Palin if she runs; What will you do?)

I believe that men like Scalia are just as subject to the pressures of politics as any member of congress is.

Which is why I believe the WaPo and Slimes are written to reach a few thousand people in and near government power. They make it clear that they want a 5-4 decision that goes their way.

These are people who can send notes, emails, and phone calls to USSC justices, and expect to have them returned. They just have to remind a couple of fence-sitters how the wrong ruling will destroy life as they know it.

34
posted on 10/07/2009 2:55:03 PM PDT
by 300winmag
(Zero to abject failure in under a month. A new land speed record!)

Marie Cocco can thank America’s civilian marksmen, who became the brilliant shooters of the European and Pacific theaters during World War II, that she’s got the freedom to blather on in English, rather than doing hard time in a German or Japanese penal colony. Clearly, she’s an empty-headed idiot.

We are simply reaching the point of irreconcileable differences on a host of critical issues in this nation. Dictatorship, dissolution, civil war are the only likely results. I advocate none of these - I am just doing the math.

I just don’t see the Constitution fairy coming in and restoring liberty. Not with the domestic enemies in the positions they hold.

The gun lobby, if it wins in the Supreme Court, is prepared to challenge every gun control law enacted at any level of government

I'm just so sick of that phrase. The Brady's, proven liars and idiots, are a "non-profit non-partisan group trying to address gun violence" or something like that, while the 80% of the public who can actually read the Constitution, are a "gun lobby".

Idiots. Liars. Charlatans.

42
posted on 10/07/2009 3:20:01 PM PDT
by Still Thinking
(If ignorance is bliss, liberals must be ecstatic!)

Scalia's writings in the Heller case were...inadequate in their defense of the RTKBA.

Justices often negotiate with one another and alter draft opinions in order to gain a swing vote or two. There are those who believe what he wrote was the strongest he could word it and still get Kennedy on board. Losing Heller and its finding that the Second does indeed protect a right of individual citizens (Duh!) would have been far worse than the weaselly opinion that emerged.

43
posted on 10/07/2009 3:26:54 PM PDT
by Still Thinking
(If ignorance is bliss, liberals must be ecstatic!)

I fear you are right. I don't believe even the conservative supremes have a clear understanding of the intent of our founding fathers. I believe that men like Scalia are just as subject to the pressures of politics as any member of congress is.

I do agree in the sense that I think the four generally viewed as conservative can tend toward the authoritarian if the issue is right. And I certainly didn't mean my other post as a full-throated defense of Scalia's conservative creds (see Raich). The rationale of some of his pro-government opinions and dissents strikes me as "but what if the police don't like it?" as if that were a legal argument. And he's viewed as the leading originalist on the court! [ hangs head in shame ] AFAIC, Justice Thomas is far more logically consistent and finds what he finds regardless of whose ox it is about to get gored.

45
posted on 10/07/2009 3:55:52 PM PDT
by Still Thinking
(If ignorance is bliss, liberals must be ecstatic!)

It's amazing how the left will say that the 2nd amendment is not meant for today, yet if you show them that the 1st is freedom of speach and the protection of print by their logic then TV and Radio and Internet should not have any 1st amendment rights since they are not spoken of in the constitution.

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